She Lived In His Locket
by Sonorous Scripter
Summary: He holds it out to me, a faded, worn photograph with a heart shape cut out of it. "This is one of the only photos I have of Tula." I blink back my tears and stare up at him. "So you cut her head off?"


I feel the hot sticky tears slip from my eyes and land silently onto my cool skin. I see his face mirroring mine in that he too is crying. But for all I know it could simply be droplets of water that cascade off his coffee-coloured skin. It would make sense. Half of his live is spent undersea.

He steps forward, albeit tentatively, and catches a tears that rolls of my face. This simple action reminds me just how starkly different he is from Wally. Wally, who would always wipe my tears away, wipe away the pain and raw emotion that they had stemmed from. Kaldur just catches the tear, and let's it soak into the palm of his hand, preserving this moment of weakness forever. Maybe the next time one of us breaks down, we can think back to that single tear drop that didn't slip away from us, and think of how we moved through the pain anyways.

I lean my head against his broad shoulders and hold onto him for support, for the support that I need but for some reason don't have. "What was it like?" I hate how my voice cracks. I hate how my lips quiver as I speak.

With each word I feel a knife scraping against my throat, not hard enough to draw blood, to break me, but with just enough force to leave it raw and damaged.

"What was it like," I start again, "to have loved her so much, and to have just... lost her?"

He pulls away then, entwining his strong fingers with my slim, lithe ones. His sea foam green eyes hold mine, and his face his contorted into a painful expression. "She—Tula—is the only person that I have ever really loved," his words are formal and clipped as he responds, but then a shuddering gasp wracks his body. Kaldur'ahm deserts his calm front, and rushed onto say, "she was the most beautiful girl I've ever seen..."

I don't feel offended by this statement, not when he looks at me in such a brotherly way. I saw Tula once, in one of Kal's memories, when M'gann and I had to fix his mind. She was a girl with ruddy hair and eyes that seemed to be inlaid with aquamarines. She had a light spattering of freckles dusting her nose and I can understand how Kaldur could have fallen for her.

He continues, "her face was what I saw when I closed my eyes each night. She was the first thing I thought of when I opened them. But then I left. And she gave her heart to my," Kaldur pauses, as if the word sounds strange on his tongue, "best friend, Garth. And then... she passed."

I feel a lump rising in my throat, and I hold on tighter to Kaldur. After all the suffering I've witnessed, all the suffering I myself have endured, it never gets easier to console others. I wish Kaldur knew how much my heart ached for him. Ached for both of us.

"I'm so sorry, Kaldur." My voice is a whisper, just as Wally and Tula are whispers in the back of our minds.

But there is a part of me, that despite the evident way he felt about her, wonders how he could have loved someone who didn't return his feelings. He loved her _so_ much.

I know it is stupid and selfish, but I voice my thoughts. I want to know how he could've loved her after all the pain she brought him?

He averts his eyes, and I think that maybe I've gone too far, when he answers, "Tula did love me back. But while I believe, I know, she loved me, I do not think she was in love with me."

My heart is writhing in my chest, and Wally's voice is a dull roar in the periphery of my mind. "Aren't you ever... upset?"

His voice is quiet, as if he doesn't dare say what he is about to. "Sometimes I feel nothing but hate towards her. She loved me enough to die for me, to die for the Team, but not enough to live for me."

A dam bursts behind my eyes, and the tears are streaming down my cheeks. Cascading furiously, and to no end. I swipe at my cheeks, claw at them until my cheeks are red from the pressure of my nails. _Make it stop, make it stop! _My mind is screaming at me to do something. But I don't know how to stop. How do I stop hurting?

My knees buckle, and Kaldur sinks to the ground with me. "Artemis, we will overcome this. Symbiosi."

I want to believe him, but as the daughter of Sportsmaster, I have learned the hard way that lies and deceit come in pretty little packaging.

"Bring him back," I gasp, hopelessly. "I just want him back." I think of how Wallace West changed from an irksome, insufferable speedster, to someone I'd happily spend my life with. How his quirks and flaws over time became endearing. And how much we'd grown together.

Hysteria is bubbling in my throat, and I am glad that no one else is around, no one else is around to see me lose it.

I feel Kaldur's comforting touch desert me, and I think that maybe I am too far gone for even someone as caring as him to handle. And then he holds something out to me. A faded and worn photograph with a shape cut out of it.

"This is one of the only a photos I have of Tula."

I blink back tears and stare up at him. "So you cut her head off?"

He knits his eyebrows in bewilderment, before understanding flits across his features. And then he laughs to himself. A quiet laugh that takes the leaden, hollowness out of my limbs. I laugh too. I am not sure why we are laughing, but sometimes that is the only other thing to do besides crying.

He shakes his head, and the laughter, so far the only good thing about my day, dies away too. He holds up a heart-shaped locket with a strange engraving that must be in Atlantean, and hands it to me. "Open it."

I do as he requests, and find a picture of Tula inside. My eyes dart back to the photograph. Kal cut out her face and put it in the locket. Tula spent her life living inside his locket.

I don't know why, but for some reason that is both the saddest and sweetest thing I have ever heard. Theirs was a love more fragile than spun sugar; broken and fragmented from the very beginning, but still Kaldur clings onto the remains of his heart.

"I held onto this locket for a long time. But I think now I should let it go. Tula, and Wally, would want us to move on."

I nod, but don't really hear him. "What does this mean?" I point to the engraving.

His lips upturn, granting me a melancholy smile. "It says symbiosi."

_Symbiosi. Together. _I take his hand in mine again, and rise to my feet. I believe him. We will make it through this. Symbiosi.


End file.
